


briar prince, thrush princess, viper queen

by feralphoenix



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A cold hand wraps around her chin and tilts it up. Hiyori narrows her eyes and glares at the snake, at his cruel smirk twisting the awful parody of Konoha’s beautiful face.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“All you have to do is wish,” he says, half giggling. “I can make it happen for you, my precious little princess.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Fuck off,” Hiyori replies, and slaps his hand away. “I don’t want or need your help.”</i>
</p>
<p>Hiyori, one year later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	briar prince, thrush princess, viper queen

**Author's Note:**

> _(her shadow ripples back to shore_ – hidden track)

The Asahina family is about as understanding as Hiyori thought they would be when she announces her intention to commute to a middle school in the city; namely, not very. This is perhaps only to be expected considering that she had briefly gone missing there after a kidnapping attempt and car accident. She beats them down in the end, though—they are probably thinking about her dead sister running away. It makes life easy for Hiyori that her aging parents will inevitably cave on most things if she digs her heels in hard enough.

Hibiya has similar plans, it turns out, though in typical Hibiya fashion he has yet to inform his parents about them.

“You are such a _weenie,”_ Hiyori tells him as they sit side by side on the riverbank, swishing their feet in the cold water. “I keep telling you, this is why you’ll never be popular.” And she throws her popsicle stick at him for good measure.

 

 

What she really wants is coffee, but her family are traditionalists and so all they have is tea. So Hiyori drinks entirely too much tea, because when she tries to uphold a normal sleeping schedule she tends to wake up in weird places, and she never had a sleepwalking problem before the city and Kagerou Daze, so. She gets dark circles under her eyes and nobody comments on them. She has no idea whether it’s politeness or fear; both are fine with her.

 

 

The one thing her parents are not willing to budge on is barring Hiyori from taking the train back and forth all the time, and Hiyori has enough trouble with creepy assholes here in her hometown that she finds this reasonable. This leads to a lot of phone calls and, finally, Hiyori with a suitcase on either side of her, glaring out the train window.

Her father’s eyes had been damp and her mother had been sniffling into a handkerchief; she had wanted more than anything to tell them both to get a grip, it wasn’t like she was Moving Away For Good, but she held her tongue.

Goodbyes are hard, even the temporary ones.

If she looks at her reflection too hard she can see the translucent silhouette of a boy in black standing in the aisle behind her. She watches the scenery instead, since looking at him makes her sick with hatred.

 

 

It’s her first summer since that August and she’s still in love. When she closes her eyes, remembering Konoha is easier than breathing: His height, his strength, the untainted white of his hair and his eyelashes, his gentle pink eyes and the soft curve of his cheek.

The years she spent stuck in Kagerou Daze are a blur of dying and watching Hibiya die and curling up in a ball on Azami’s lap while listening to her talk for relief because it hurt _so much,_ but she remembers the end. She remembers the world cracking open and a vaguely familiar man and woman underneath a starry sky; she remembers the beach, and the rain, and Konoha lifting her feverish body out of the water and laying a black flower on her chest; she remembers life crackling back into her like lightning, and his smile.

Being alive is unspeakable, at this cost. Having the others around is better, because they understand what it is to survive standing atop someone else’s sacrifice. But it still remains that even the rest of the Mekakushidan have either managed to save their friends and family or found a way to make their peace with the past.

 

 

A cold hand wraps around her chin and tilts it up. Hiyori narrows her eyes and glares at the snake, at his cruel smirk twisting the awful parody of Konoha’s beautiful face.

“All you have to do is _wish,”_ he says, half giggling. “I can make it happen for you, my precious little princess.”

“Fuck off,” Hiyori replies, and slaps his hand away. “I don’t want _or_ need _your_ help.”

 

 

(Predictably, she wakes up to the high school kid across the aisle from her trying to take upskirt pics with his smartphone. She braces herself on her sturdier suitcase and kicks him in the shin.)

 

 

The brick house is a relief. She ought to be unpacking her bags herself instead of making Ayano do it, but Hiyori can’t help indulging herself and sitting in front of the fan for ten minutes. The breeze in her face makes her keep sneezing, but this way she can cool off all the gross sweat and she won’t fall asleep again.

Ayano is still chattering. “It’s nice to have more people in the house, so I don’t mind,” she says upon returning to the landing, and hefts up Hiyori’s other suitcase. “I tried to tell the kids they could come back here whenever they want, but I don’t think Shuuya wants to, and even Kousuke and Tsubomi only keep their things here to humor me. I guess them staying here reminds them too much of Dad. Oh, but Kousuke might be worrying about how to explain Marie to the neighbors. He’s better with people nowadays, but he’s still shy.”

Hiyori stretches and lets Ayano go on. It will be easier, now; she’s where she’s supposed to be.

 

 

“This is nice,” says the snake, flicking dusty vials with a fingernail and making a clear _ping_ sound each time. “I haven’t been here in too long. Kenjirou was such a good host. Not that your orneriness hasn’t got its own unique charm.”

Hiyori crosses her arms under her chest and taps her foot. “Will you quit trying to hijack my body every single time I go to sleep,” she says. “It just figures that out of everyone who got dragged into this ridiculous mess, I’m the one who gets the total asshole for a passenger. You’re already _granting_ somebody’s wish. Dig the common sense out of that teeny tiny snake brain of yours and settle down.”

Yellow eyes beam through the dim office. “You are _adorable,”_ says the snake, “when you try to bluff to me.”

God, she wants to slap that sneer off his face. “Settle down,” she repeats, “or do I have to make you?”

_“Make_ me?” He widens his eyes in mock surprise, then starts to titter, hand splayed grotesquely across his face. His smile is so wide it looks like an open wound. “My dear little fool, how and with what army do you intend to make me do what you want?”

Hiyori gives him her biggest, fakest, most cutesy smile. Then she turns to the doorframe and smashes her head against it with all her strength.

 

 

She wakes up to pattering footsteps: Ayano in her pajamas, newly-flipped-on hallway lights burning her eyes. “Hiyori? What’s going on?”

“Ow,” says Hiyori, who is on her knees clutching her forehead. “I was pretty sure that would work, but I never got to try it before. It would have been hard to explain to my parents. They’re confused enough by the sleepwalking.”

“Ah,” says Ayano. Hiyori closes her eyes, relieved by the darkness. There’s no worry she’s going to fall asleep again, not when her head hurts this much. “Has this been going on for a long time?”

“Yeah, it’s really annoying,” and it’s a relief to admit it. “At least as far out in the boonies as I live, this creepy jerk can’t get up to that much mischief. I thought about complaining to Hibiya before, but Hibiya’s kinda useless when it comes to things like this.”

Ayano is quiet for another few minutes. “Um, let’s get you a band-aid for now,” she says. “Tomorrow we can go visit Seto and Marie and see what we can do about this.”

 

 

Seto and Marie, as it turns out, are both away at work. A consensus is reached that trying to reach either of them while they’re busy is about as meaningful as trying to call Kido when she’s got her earbuds in (Kido not-so-surreptitiously steps on Kano’s foot), and that Hiyori might as well just wait at the base. Hiyori shrugs and agrees. If she’s going to run the risk of catnaps she might as well do it with people who understand why they’re a problem to supervise.

So Ayano takes her pet neet out on a date, Kido and Kano leave for their part-time jobs, and Takane goes to her summer classes. Momo, unfortunately, is busy enough with idol work that Hiyori has not seen her at all yet (ugh). This leaves her alone in the base with Kokonose Haruka.

It’s awkward. Obviously it’s awkward. Haruka’s hair is gray and his eyes are brown but since he was after all Konoha’s template, the shape of their faces is almost exactly the same. Just looking at Haruka hurts.

Watching him would make it too hard to hold back the wish, so Hiyori looks out the window and kicks her feet mostly. Haruka, being grown up enough to take a hint, sits quietly and draws instead of trying to engage her in conversation.

She’s almost bored enough to wander off, but there’s a rustle and when she turns Haruka is holding his sketchbook out to her. She’s curious enough to take it, but almost drops it when she realizes that he’d been drawing her: Dark circles under her eyes and bandaid and all. _Ugh._

_“Really?”_ is all she says as she hands it back. Haruka grins at her and doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish.

“I know you’ve got your vanity, but you were making such a great face,” he says. _Men._

So they wind up talking after that.

“I hate it, I hate having him in my head,” she complains. It is so good to complain. Hibiya is useful for some things, and it’s nice to have someone at home who knows what happened, but he’s a bad sounding board. “Aren’t the snakes supposed to shut up when they’re acting as somebody’s life, I hate having to be careful to not want anything too much.”

Haruka makes a sympathetic noise. “I guess since he was still active when he was acting as Sensei’s life… I don’t know, I think Shintarou-kun’s comes out to bother him sometimes too. I guess the problem isn’t his coming out so much as his having a bad personality.”

_It must be nice to be able to talk like it’s not your problem,_ is what Hiyori wants to say, but she tries to bite her tongue.

“But Marie ought to be able to settle him down, so there is that,” Haruka goes on. “And besides…”

“Besides, what?” Hiyori asks, looking at him sidelong. Konoha’s absence is a physical pain in her chest. It’s worse than being hit by a truck, or skewered on steel beams, since those things at least are fatal and stop hurting when you die. Missing Konoha doesn’t go away. Not being able to talk about it just makes the pain burrow deeper and deeper into her chest, until it’s crept into her bones like a cancer.

“Once you and Hibiya-kun are here for good, we’ll probably be able to do something about Konoha. No one’s forgotten. And it’ll probably take all of us, so we’ve been waiting. But I’m sure, with everyone together…”

She bites her nails and nods.

 

 

It’s evening by the time Seto and Marie get in, and Hiyori is about to pass out and therefore pitifully grateful for their arrival.

“Oh nooooooo,” is the first thing Marie says upon seeing Hiyori, without anyone even having to explain anything—apparently having fully mastered her abilities as the queen means that she can tell these things at a glance. She nearly trips over her feet when she comes running over, though; she’s still the same old Marie.

Maybe if it were somebody else getting all up in her personal space Hiyori would get embarrassed and snappish, but Marie’s prehensile hair and baby face remind Hiyori of Azami. It’s soothing enough for her to relax and submit to Marie leaning in nearly-too-close and poking and prodding.

“Has he been like this the _whole_ time,” Marie says in dismay.

“Yes,” Hiyori grumbles. “If he weren’t technically all that’s keeping me alive I’d have throttled him ages ago. He is _such_ a bastard.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s not _your_ fault,” Hiyori says, impending sleep making her slur. Marie puffs up her cheeks in determination, and Hiyori only just stops herself from remarking out loud that she looks like an albino squirrel.

Marie’s hands are cold on her cheeks, and it makes her jump a little. “Just look into my eyes,” Marie says with a small smile. She looks so much like Konoha for a moment that Hiyori wants to cry. “It will all be okay, I promise.”

It’s believe her or give up and lose her mind completely, at this point. Hiyori gathers up all her resolve and looks Marie straight in the face, lets the numbness wash over the deep alien parts of her, relief and misery hand in hand.

“We’re going to fix this,” Marie says, so quiet that only Hiyori can hear it: “We’re going to fix this soon, I swear.”


End file.
